Tom Foley likely to lose governor's race in Connecticut

After a week of lost ballots and mistaken announcements the count has finished in Connecticut and it seems that Tom Foley will not be the Nutmeg State’s next governor.

Mayor of Bridgeport, Bill Finch, told a press conference on Friday morning that after two days of problems with the ballots counting has finally finished. Susan Bysiewicz, the secretary of state, who is the Connecticut’s top election official, is expected to make an announcement later declaring Mr. Malloy the winner

Finch announced that Daniel P. Malloy, the Democratic former mayor of Stamford received 17,800 votes while the former ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley took 4,075 votes. These results give Mr. Malloy a lead of 5,000-votes statewide.

However due to the amount of hiccups in the set up of ballots and the counting of votes Foley is expected to take legal action.

Speaking to a radio program on Wednesday Bysiewicz said “I’m sure there’ll be lively litigation over it.” Republicans have said that they expect him to explore every legal option.

The final count did not include the 100 ballots cast after 8pm on Tuesday. However, it did include the 336 ballots that were found, unopened at a polling site.

After the first flawed count Bysiewicz announced, on Wednesday, that Mr. Malloy was the winner by 3,103. However, these were not the final figures and did not include the missing ballots.

Foley declared that his numbers indicated that he won and he even called a radio program to chastise Bysiewicz.

Richard Foley, a former Republican Party chairman in Connecticut, who has known Thomas Foley for 20 years said “It was a bit out of character for him…He is not given to flights of fancy. This was not his normal M.O.”